Chefs’ Week PDX to Hit Portland in February

Friday, January 30, 2015

Kai Soderberg, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Chef Doug Adams of Portland's Imperial restaurant will participate in Chefs' Week PDX. Photo courtesy, chefsweekpdx.com

This February, Chefs' Week PDX will host a four-day feast featuring work from some of the most acclaimed regional talent, including chefs from Portland and up and down the West Coast.

Chefs' Week will feature five dinners, each of which will explore a chosen theme ranging from modern cooking techniques, taste-of-place and tradition. The theme that unifies all events, though, is one of camaraderie, collaboration and culinary creativity.

The dinners are fixed courses being held in various locations throughout Portland, some in respect to the attributes sof the kitchen. The Cascadia by Fire dinner, for example, will take place at Ned Ludd, where participating chefs will take advantage of the their state-of-the-art wood stoves.

The other events include West Coast Modern at Ataula, Present Culture at St.Jack, and Bound by Tradition at Elder Hall.

Each event will be priced per person based on the amount of courses served, and the notoriety of the chefs involved. Proceeds from all events benefit the Oregon Conservation Strategy.

The enormous list of participating chefs includes, Doug Adams, Jason French and Nora Antene from Portland, Matt Dillon of Seattle and Rachel Saunders of Oakland.

The series will culminate in an extravagant- and expensive- 24-course feast featuring all participating PDX Chefs’ Week chefs as well as appearances from San Francisco’s Vince Nguyen, and Portland’s Carrie Merrill, William Priesch and Joel Stocks.

For more information on the specific events including event themes and pricing, visit the Chefs’ Week PDX website.

Related Slideshow: A Bar in every Quadrant: Top 5 Bars to Visit This Week

For this week, I chose cheaper bars. Christmas has come and gone and this is the time to sit on your duckits until tax returns come. So, in February we’ll roll out the fancy bars, but this week’s theme is frugality.

Prev Next

SW Portland.

Santeria and Mary’s club. Tucked away in the alley of Ankeny off Broadway, Santeria is the last bastion of old school Portland. The service is efficient, food is excellent, and they have a decent, if limited, booze selection. The most important thing though, and what I mean by old school: Santeria is still cheap. The owners are about the two sweetest people you’ll ever meet and all the tips are split evenly amongst the kitchen and bar. It’s like some sort of utopia ideal, which works in theory, but…well definitely check it out quick.

Prev Next

NW Portland.

Paymaster Lounge.
This is one of the few places where one can still smoke and play pool simultaneously. They have a large heated patio with outdoor pool table. The pool table is crooked but that just makes for a longer game and more Paul Newmanesque photo-ops.

Prev Next

SE Portland.

Lovecraft Bar. This is the kind of bar you daydreamed about whilst sitting all the way in the back of the classroom, popping zits and trying to hide the fact that you’re blaring NIN on your headphones. This is an actual place to have a good time and not a place to be seen. If you are the type that only lets loose once every two months, Lovecraft is the place to do it. If you bring a book with you to the bar every night of the week, you might be annoyed at the high level of energy.

Prev Next

NE Portland.

Beulahland. If an indicator of a good bar is minimal staff turnover, Beulahland gets the prize. This bar may no longer be the lynchpin that keeps inner NE 28th Avenue together, but it has played a vital role in making the street a fun place to hang out. With coffee and minors on the South side bar and alcohol and photobooth on the North side, reasonably priced drinks, good food and staff, it’s a great place to begin or end your 28th Avenue crawl.

Prev Next

St. Johns.

Fixin’ To. St. johns is a wonderful place to observe small town life. If you make it down the long and formidable Lombard Street, you’ll discover there are a lot of people just like you who simply never left. They will be at one of the two heated mega patios, talking banal minutia over cheap beer.